Tooling around the History channel, I found this. Most of it is common knowledge, however other parts of it took me by surprise.

1. Lincoln’s early life was beset by tragedy, including his mother dying horribly when he was nine--he had to help make her coffin.
2. He was so estranged from his abusive father that when his father lay dying, the adult Lincoln refused his request for a deathbed visit.
3. Throughout his adult life, Lincoln was plagued by depression, which he was completely open about and called his condition “hypo”--short for hypochondria.
4. Lincoln suffered two nervous breakdowns--so severe that both times his friends mounted suicide watches.
5. As a young man growing up on the frontier, Lincoln stopped carrying a knife because he feared he might use it to commit suicide.
6. In his adult years he wrote a poem contemplating his own suicide, which historians only discovered in the last year.
7. Even in the White House, Lincoln frequently spoke of his fear that he might commit suicide.
8. On several occasions, Lincoln had clear premonitions of his own untimely death.
9. When he was first elected, Lincoln had a vision that he would be elected President twice but would not live to serve out his second term.
10. In the days before his death, Lincoln had a dream of his own assassination and told his wife and his Cabinet.
11. As a teenager, Lincoln watched one of his friends suddenly go mad and try to kill his mother, and for years afterwards Lincoln was plagued by fears that he might too suddenly lose his reason. He wrote a poem about this.
12. Lincoln’s second nervous breakdown came after he had abruptly broken his engagement to Mary Todd, whom he later married. Historians are divided about the reasons for the breaking of the engagement, citing homosexuality, another woman and syphilis. The film investigates all three.
13. Lincoln shared a bed with his intimate friend Joshua Speed for four years, and wrote a series of letters which seem like love letters to him. As a result, the question of Lincoln’s potential homosexuality has always vexed historians. (Okay that's a new one. :eek: )
14. New evidence has recently emerged in the form of eyewitness accounts that suggest Lincoln, during his presidency, had a continuing homosexual relationship with a Captain of his Guard. This is revealed in the film.
15. Recent scholarship has also found evidence of there indeed being “another woman”--Matilda Edwards, whom Lincoln fell for just before he broke off his engagement to Mary Todd. This is revealed in the film. (Oh so he was a switch hitter?)
16. Lincoln had a history of visiting prostitutes before his marriage, and he was convinced throughout his life he had caught syphilis from one in 1832. (Damn man, sounds like he was just a horndog! )
17. As a rising politician in Illinois, Lincoln developed a reputation for dirty tricks, for writing libelous anonymous letters (he was even challenged to a duel for one), and for the ruthless demolition of his opponents.
18. Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd was very depressed too, and her sanity has been called into question. In the early years of their marriage, Mary’s tantrums became legendary in Springfield, and she was frequently seen physically attacking Lincoln.
19. When President Polk went to Congress for authorization of his war against Mexico, Lincoln was a lonely vote against the war.
20. This unpopular position, during Lincoln's sole term as a U.S. Representative in Washington, effectively destroyed his political career in Congress. He returned in disgrace to Springfield where he stayed out of public life for five long years.
21. Two of Lincoln’s four children died young and Tad, his youngest, was born handicapped. After his beloved son Willie died in the White House at eleven years old--Lincoln would go to his tomb and raise the lid of his coffin to gaze on his son’s embalmed face.
22. In the White House, Mary Lincoln would hold séances to try to speak with her dead son Willie and Lincoln attended them.
23. Lincoln was not a practicing Christian in any way, and as a young man he published a book about his reluctance to accept the Jesus story. Though he increasingly invoked the concept of the divine in his later writings and speeches, he never referred to Jesus or made claims for the Lord’s will. (Now this one got me thinking. I even went back and looked at some other stuff, and it's right. I was a little floored by this. Thus is why I love history, the more you study, the more new stuff you learn.)

Old Abe might have been gay, although gay might not be the best word considering his almost constant state of depression. Have you seen pictures of Mary Todd. That woman was as close to being a man as you can come and still not actually be one.

Well I hadn't thought of that before, but you do raise a good point. She wasn't going to win any beauty contest, even back then.

She had the kind of beauty that only shines in a smoky honky-tonk moments before last call.

She was coyote ugly.

Old Abe might have been gay, although gay might not be the best word considering his almost constant state of depression

I've heard that homosexuality may actually be a form of mental illness...

http://www.allforums.net/showthread.php?t=20672

Yeah, but you didn't hear it from me.

I feel like a movie star. I have my own personal stalker.

It seems highly unlikely that Abraham was gay.
He had a stable marriage with Mary Todd, tho she could be a bit of a tarmagant. However, when he told her to sit down and shut up, she did. Observers noted how he doted on her and she responded in her own way.

Also, none of his enemies ( and he had plenty, both in the North and the South) , accused him of homosexuality. These enemy men (and women) were quite vociferous as well as being vituperative, yet this particular accusation never arose--at any time. And it's not like homosexuality was unheard of at that time.

I feel like a movie star. I have my own personal stalker

Yeah, it's all about you

The sharing his bed with a man is also not indicative of homosexuality. While not common, it was an accepted practice at the time.

Abe's stepmom, Sarah Bush Lincoln, was illiterate, tho she gave her new son a few books to encourage him to read. She was a kindly soul and also claimed to have second sight, like many hill folk--when they came to tell her that Lincoln was dead, she said, "I knowed they'd kill him. I ben waitin' fer it."

Abe was a good poet. Several years ago, I ran across this peom he wrote and I was impressed by how good it was:



"My childhood's home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There's pleasure in it too.

O Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise,

And, freed from all that's earthly vile,
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.

As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day;
As bugle-notes that, passing by,
In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar--
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.

Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmate loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them, to mind again
The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs."

That is very good, Rendova. Do you know what year it was written?

In 1846, Lincoln wrote a letter to his friend William Johnston and enclosed the poem, sedan....here's more in Lincoln's own words:

"In the fall of 1844, thinking I might aid some to carry the State of Indiana for Mr. Clay, I went into the neighborhood in that State in which I was raised, where my mother and only sister were buried, and from which I had been absent about fifteen years. That part of the country is, within itself, as unpoetical as any spot of the earth; but still, seeing it and its objects and inhabitants aroused feelings in me which were certainly poetry; though whether my expression of those feelings is poetry is quite another question. When I got to writing, the change of subject divided the thing into four little divisions or cantos, the first only of which I send you now, and may send the others hereafter. "


note---Abe's mom, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, is buried at Spencer County, Indiana.

Any chance of a pic of Mary Todd.

Photo of Mary Todd. She's not THAT bad!

http://img426.imageshack.us/img426/7146/marytoddlincolnqu0.jpg


Poor woman, not only did she see Abe shot before her very eyes, she was also committed to an insane asylum by her own son.

PPS. In looking for this photo, I ran across an INTERESTING Illuminati webpage entitled "Mary Todd Killed Abe."

It seems highly unlikely that Abraham was gay.
If he slept with a man and sent him love letters, it seems highly likely.
He had a stable marriage with Mary Todd
He hated being married and joked about it often. I've also heard that she was a rather abusive wife.
Also, none of his enemies ( and he had plenty, both in the North and the South) , accused him of homosexuality. These enemy men (and women) were quite vociferous as well as being vituperative, yet this particular accusation never arose--at any time. And it's not like homosexuality was unheard of at that time.
Would you really catch yourself calling the President of a militant nation a sodomite in the Victorian Era? Even so, he would have likely been a closet case and so it was likely to not be a well-known rumor at the time.
Photo of Mary Todd. She's not THAT bad!
*chuckles*

Oh really?

Please cite a source by a respected and reputable Lincoln biographer that this man was gay, Evak.
As far as I know, there are none.
During the pre-Civil War era, men tended to talk and write in flowery and windblown phrases. This does not indicate homosexuality of any kind. It was a flowery and Chivalrous age--read the letters from the CW soldiers writing home.
There is as much substance to this idiotic notion as there is to Jefferson's supposed affair with Sally Hemmings.

PS Yes, he joked about and WITH his wife Mary Todd. As noted, she was a hot-tempered Southern belle with Confederate sympathies. Maybe this was the only way the man could keep his sanity.

Please cite a source by a respected and reputable Lincoln biographer that this man was gay, Evak.
A) Did I say he was gay? No. My operative word was "if."
B) Any source I would come up with would likely be not seen as "respected and reputable" because it interferes with your worldview.
C) Pendragon got this information from the "History Channel" and I've heard it countless other times. Is the "History Channel" suddenly not a quantifiable, trusted source?

Or is it because there is no way Honest Abe could be gay because he was a great man and not a deviant?
During the pre-Civil War era, men tended to talk and write in flowery and windblown phrases. This does not indicate homosexuality of any kind.
If you'd like to post the Lincoln letters and show me your interpretation of the comments made that may be seen as "romantic", I'd love to read it.
There is as much substance to this idiotic notion as there is to Jefferson's supposed affair with Sally Hemmings.
Why is it an idiotic notion? Why is Jefferson's affair with Ms. Hemmings not likely?
PS Yes, he joked about and WITH his wife Mary Todd. As noted, she was a hot-tempered Southern belle with Confederate sympathies. Maybe this was the only way the man could keep his sanity.
The sentiment against his wife was made during his career as a lawyer, before the Confederacy existed.

The problem I see with this debate is that Americans romanticize their historical leaders, or even people in general with world history do that, and it leads to disbelief in things that may actually be true.

Take the movie "Alexander" by Oliver Stone, due to Stone's reputation and Alexander being protrayed as being homosexual, the movie floundered. Despite decent reviews and a fair amount of advertisement, not to mention a huge budget, it floundered.

Did you see this movie Ren? Do you reject the idea that Alexander may have been a homosexual? If so, why?

Evak, I will reply to your queries at length tomorrow--about to head on home.
However, would like to state two things:

There are no, repeat no, respected historians, and by that I mean researchers who have studied Lincoln's life and writings at some length, who have stated they have "discovered" Lincoln was gay. Because there is nothing to indicate this is so except for a few letters , diary entries, and the fact that he shared a bed with a man which was very common in those days.

Respected historians, no matter what their (personal) persuasion, always list their sources so that their writings may stand up to scrutiny by other historians.

This Kramer fella has not even published.! (he's the man pushing this "Lincoln was gay" agenda. He is obviously worried his "sources" will not stand up to scrutiny--yet he's held off on his book for several years.

Lastly, do I care if the man was gay? Or may have been gay?
I do not. This does not detract in any way from what the man accomplished. In my mind, it matters nothing.

What bothers me is that the stories ( like Jefferson's affair with Hemmings) are simply untrue and/or highly unlikely with little or no historical verification to back them up.
Let's see the evidence!

(Yes, Alex was gay. so what?) :)

There are no, repeat no, respected historians, and by that I mean researchers who have studied Lincoln's life and writings at some length, who have stated they have "discovered" Lincoln was gay. Because there is nothing to indicate this is so except for a few letters , diary entries, and the fact that he shared a bed with a man which was very common in those days.
That may be, but I'd like to see why the letters aren't damning evidence.

Here is an interesting rebuttal, from this webiste--long, but very well worth reading:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/050221/21lincoln_3.htm



Why does it matter how much Lincoln agonized over marriage? Quite frankly, scholars say, because this was one of the few times in his life that a man who would become known for his single-minded determination actually wavered. He didn't snap out of his gloom for over a year, when he finally returned to Mary, asked her forgiveness, and then married her in a hastily arranged ceremony. After that, "the debilitating episodes of the 'hypo' " --as Lincoln called his depressions--"did not recur," writes Wilson, and instead of struggling with self-doubt, Lincoln "became known for his resolution." From then on, James McPherson wrote in the New York Review of Books , "once he made a decision, he stuck with it--a matter of no small importance when the issues became Union or Disunion. Victory or Defeat. Slavery or Freedom." As Lincoln would famously tell those who opposed his Emancipation Proclamation, "The promise, being made, must be kept."

Still, it was not a happy match. Herndon was far from the only friend of Lincoln's who came to despise his wife. (He called Mary "the hell-cat of the age.") Nevertheless, the couple made their marriage last through the turbulent years ahead, including the deaths, in childhood, of two of their four sons. (A third would die six years after the assassination.) Lincoln would always be a melancholy man, but the debilitating, suicidal depressions that plagued him in his youth would never return.

In a book published last month, another scholar, C. A. Tripp, came to a radically different conclusion about Lincoln's depression and personal problems--attributing them to the fact that he was "predominantly homosexual." For evidence, Tripp, who died before his book was published, points out that Lincoln, while they were rooming together, slept in the same bed with his friend Joshua Speed for four years, that he used the salutation "Yours forever" only in letters to Speed, and that his despair in 1841 was the result of Speed's own imminent marriage. Tripp is not the first Lincoln scholar to make this claim. Carl Sandburg, in his 1924 biography, wrote enigmatically that Lincoln and Speed's relationship had "a streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets."

Controversy. Most historians, however, don't see much of a case for a gay Lincoln. Many men slept in beds together in the 19th century, they point out. Tripp is flatly wrong when he claims Speed is the only one to whom Lincoln signed his letters "Yours forever" --he addressed notes to at least half a dozen other people that way. His book has been called "a hoax and a fraud" by his former coauthor, who walked off the project. And for many scholars, the very fact that Lincoln made no attempt to hide his relationship--and even spoke about it as president--confirms their suspicions of Tripp's thesis. "I simply cannot believe that, if the early relationship between Joshua Speed and Lincoln had been sexual, the president of the United States would so freely and publicly speak of it," writes historian Donald.

*********************************

I'm not going to say it's impossible for this man to be gay. What I'm saying is that there is simply not enough evidence to support this theory and to blatantly trumpet it as fact ( as in the case of Jefferson/Hemmings) is dishonest,wrong and historically shoddy.

In doing research on this, I ran across several websites claiming this theory to be gospel truth. One of them maintained, besides the "fact" that Lincoln was gay, but also that Cleopatra was black, when in fact she was Macedonian Greek.

This is "history" of the worst kind.